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The “Unclean” Jew in the Crosshairs

Summary: Antisemites calling Jews “unclean” is their first step towards calling for purifying them from the world. How should the world respond?

There have been a number of political leaders who have called Jews “unclean”:

Adolf Hitler’sMein Kampf (1925): “The moral and physical cleanliness of this race [Jews] was a point in itself. It was externally apparent that these were not water-loving people, and unfortunately one could frequently tell that even with eyes closed. Later the smell of these caftan wearers often made me ill. Added to this were their dirty clothes and their none too heroic appearance.”

Hamas Charter (1988): “The basic structure of the Islamic Resistance Movement consists of Moslems who have given their allegiance to Allah whom they truly worship, – “I have created the jinn and humans only for the purpose of worshipping” – who know their duty towards themselves, their families and country. In all that, they fear Allah and raise the banner of Jihad in the face of the oppressors, so that they would rid the land and the people [Jews] of their uncleanliness, vileness and evils.”

Acting Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (2014): “Keep the settlers and the extremists away from Al-Aqsa and our holy places. We will not allow our holy places to be contaminated.”

It did not take long for these leaders and parties to move from their initial anti-Semitic positions, to calls to eradicate the Jews:

Hitler’s Nazi party gradually stripped Jews of their citizenship in the early and mid-1930’s once the gained power, pushed them into ghettoes and work camps by late 1930’s and began their annihilation by the early 1940’s.

Hamas called for the murder of Jews and destruction of Israel in the very same 1988 charter: “rid the land and the people [Jews]“, “there is aJew behind me, come and kill him” and “Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Moslem people.” The Palestinian people voted for Hamas into 58% of the Parliament in 2006.

Iran’s leader was quite clear in 2014: “This barbaric, wolflike & infanticidal regime of #Israel which spares no crime has no cure but to be annihilated“

One can call Abbas a “moderate” in comparison to those around him in that he has not openly called for killing Israelis (he prefers the indirect method of honoring and celebrating those that do kill Israelis).

President Obama commented about ISIS (2014) that “the world must never cease in seeking to defeat their evil ideology.” Such evil ideology is the open platform in the Iranian and Palestinian leadership.

As Obama is actively engaged in dialogue and negotiations with both of those parties, does he think

that the Iranian and Palestinian platforms are not “evil ideologies“

that they are exceptions that do not need to be defeated, or

his process of negotiation and placating them is a method of “defeating” them?